Asymptotes
by OreoNumber3
Summary: When you live with my family, you have two options; accept or risk a falling out. Accept the hunt, accept the moving around, accept the emotional distance. Dean accepted, I fell out. (Story I wrote about Sam and John's relationship as Sam was growing up.)


Nope. Don't own Supernatural. If I did, I'd get an episode where Sam and Dean meet little Sam and Dean. But yes, enjoy! I tried to do what I thought Sam felt about his dad since I've always found it really easiy to get into Sam's head (I'm the youngest with a sister who's four years older and my dad's kinda like John). As stated previously, enjoy and try not to bite my head off too badly.

* * *

It's not that I hate my dad.

It's complicated. He and I have an odd... partnership, for lack of a better word. But I've never hated him. When it comes down to it, there's still a small part of me that wants his approval. I just don't know how to get it. I think the best way to explain is to start from the beginning.

As you know, when I was 6 months old, my mother died in a fire. She was my dad's heart. She was his everything. When she died, there was a span of a few months where he had no clue what to do with himself. Dean told me that there were days when dad would drink himself unconcious, rather than deal with the grief. This left Dean to take care of me while our dad struggled to pick up the pieces left over from losing his wife. This aged Dean a lot. We'll get back to that in a minute, but let's continue.

When we got older, dad discovered the supernatural. He realised that, while he had been thinking the war he fought was over, there had been another going on the whole time. Instead of drinking, he found another, slightly less self-destructive, way to deal with his grief. That's all it started out as and it just became a habit, an addiction. The need to distract himself from all he had lost. While he hunted, Dean would take care of me. I think the reason he never complained was because he had grown up. He knew what our dad needed him to be in order for him to be distracted from his pain. Dean knew that he could have kicked up a fuss, but dad needed him to be an adult in a kids body. So Dean drew the short end of the stick and gave up being a kid. Not for me, but because dad needed another adult instead of another kid for his addiction to work.

During all this, I was looking up to Dean. I wanted to be just like him. I think that if I had suceeded, everything would have been easier. I saw how, when Dean shot a werewolf, dad would smile and give him a look of approval. In those moments, he didn't see Dean as his son, he saw him as his equal. I wanted that approval, that equality. I did everything I could, tried to be just like Dean. All I had ever wanted was dad's approval and verification that he didn't love hunting more than me. So I practiced with my weapons and, when that turned into a total bust, I studied. Learning was the one thing I was best at. I though, maybe if I get one more A on a test or if I get the best marks in the class, dad will look at me with approval. I mean, other kids told me how their parents were thrilled when then got good marls.

But as I got older, I saw that dad was using Dean's maturity to hunt. Kind of like how an alcoholic uses an excuse to go to a bar. Dean was old enough to take care of everything else, so why couldn't he go and hunt? I guess, looking back, Dean knew this but he knew that, without the hunt, dad might return to the bottle. He knew that, unless dad was distracted, things could be so much worse for all three of us. So he never complained. But I was still young and I didn't like how dad was shoving off his responciblities, so I would call him out on it. Dad and Dean would et angry because I was threatening the illusion that everything was okay. If we didn't admit that dad was losing it and the hunt was the only thing keeping him together, then we could pretend it wasn't happening. I was too young and stubborn to realise that, by pressing dad about it, I could have very well ruined the last shred of sanity he had.

Instead of explaining to me why dad was like this, Dean just tried to be a better son to make up for my failures. He was the one who, when dad had been gone for 2 months on a hunt, had still given him the respect and adoration he wanted. Dean gave him that respect because dad needed it. I wanted dad to work for it because I didn't want our life to turn into a constant cycle of undeserved love. But, as I continued to grow older, I got mroe and more angry that dad refused to be the dad I wanted and he got more and more angry that I was calling him out on it.

Then everything changed.

He realised that I wanted the carrot and not the stick. Dean worked better with pressure and I worked better with a reward. Instead of comparing me to Dean, he compared Dean to me. Instead of me hearing 'Why can't you shoot like Dean?', Dean would hear 'Why can't you focus on research like Sam?'. I didn't want this. Dean gave up his own personality to become what dad needed him to be and all he had asked in return was dad's approval for his sacrifice. But here I was, walzing in and ruining everything. Because dad wanted me to shut up about his addiction to hunting, he tried to make me associate him with approval instead of discipline.

It didn't work.

I left for Standford because, 1. I couldn't stand to watch dad rip Dean's confidence apart just to get me to join the cause. 2. I just wasn't emotionally able to change myself to suit dads need, nor was he able to change himself to suit mine. And 3. I couldn't forgive him for the abandonment, the hurt feelings, the constant You Aren't Good Enoughs.

Like I said, I don't hate my dad. We were just either too different or too alike to work together. He needed mature sons that were pliant in our life. I needed a mature dad that was solid for mine. He expected respect, I expected him to work for it. He wanted our family to be an army unit. I just wanted our family to be a family. When it comes down to it, how everything turned out was no ones fault. We were just too different.


End file.
